June Newsletter - RDA's First CoP, VP18 Call for Sessions Deadline, MoU with Costa Rica and more

RDA’s Agricultural Data Interest Group (IGAD) Coffee Break Webinar Series

The first webinar as part of the RDA/IGAD's new Coffee Break initiative took place on 16 June with more than 50 participants. The webinar, titled Aligning AGROVOC and Ontologies to connect semantics to improve Agrifood data annotation and interoperability featured Pier Luigi Buttigieg, Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration/GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research and inspired great dialogue between the participants and presenter during the final 15-minute Q&A session.

Throughout the webinar, Dr. Buttigieg answered the question of whether it would be a good idea to semantically connect AGROVOC, FAO agricultural multilingual thesaurus, with complementary ontologies.  Asked “Is it worth it?” Pier Luigi answered, “Yes, it is worth it, because thesauri and ontologies do different things, they have different jobs.”

Watch the full webinar here.

The next webinar, as part of the RDA/IGAD Coffee Break Initiative entitled Agricultural market dynamics based on data evidence and featuring Luiza Petrosyan, Universitat Politécnica de Valencia, took place on 30 June. The recording should be available in the coming days.

Journal Data Policies: Getting Started With a Framework and Examples from Society Journals

July 2, 2021 14:00 UTC (10am ET)

This seminar features the new Research Data Policy Framework for All Journals and Publishers developed by the RDA Data Policy Standardisation and Implementation Interest Group (IG). The agenda includes an overview of the framework and its adoption to date, followed by use cases from both Science/AAAS and AGU on the journey of implementing data policies within society journals including our current alignment with the framework.  Register now.

The RDA I-Adopt Working Group presents the "Decomposing Observable Property Descriptions into Machine-Readable Components to Increase Interoperability Across Data Standards" Webinar

28 Jul 2021 - 15:00 to 16:00 UTC
 

This webinar introduces using the Interoperable Descriptions of Observable Property Terminology (I-ADOPT) framework for representing components of observable properties, also called variables, in a machine-readable format to allow for easier mapping between dedicated terminologies.

The I-ADOPT framework was developed through community input. The process involved gathering a series of variable use cases from the environmental science community, compiling and analyzing a catalogue of existing vocabularies and conceptual models, and determining a minimal viable set of components and relationships for describing these variables. Annotation of current observable property standards with components of the I-ADOPT framework would aid in increasing interoperability across the wide variety of data standards used within the environmental science domain.

Attendees will learn how to first analyze their variable descriptions to determine critical components and then use the I-ADOPT framework to decompose and express these variables in a machine-readable form. This webinar will be of interest to researchers and research data practitioners who have a need to annotate electronic resources with information about observable properties.

Learn more.

The following items are in community review.  RDA members are encouraged to review and provide comments which the groups will then consider in moving their projects forward.

• FAIR Principles for Research Software (FAIR4RS Principles)
  Deadline for Comments: Sunday, 11 July, 2021
  Research software is a fundamental and vital part of research worldwide, yet there remain significant challenges to software productivity, quality, reproducibility, and sustainability. Improving the practice of scholarship is a common goal of the open science, open source software and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) communities, but improving the sharing of research software has not yet been a strong focus of the latter. To improve the FAIRness of research software, the FAIR for Research Software (FAIR4RS) Working Group has sought to understand how to apply the FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship to research software, bringing together existing and new community efforts.
   
• Guidelines for Publishing Structured Metadata on the Web V3.0
  Deadline for Comments: Friday, 16 July, 2021
  Efforts to adopt structured metadata within and across domains would benefit greatly from a set of recommendations that would help ensure consistent implementation leading to enhanced discoverability and accessibility of data. Based on community consultation and subsequent work, these guidelines from the Metadata Schemas Working Group provide nine recommendations to support the process of publishing structured metadata on the web.
   
• IGAD Community of Practice - Proposal
  Deadline for Comments: Friday, 6 August, 2021

Taylor & Francis Strengthens its Partnership with RDA

Taylor & Francis, publisher of books and academic journals, has joined the Research Data Alliance (RDA) as an organizational member. Its colleagues have been involved in RDA working groups for many years, chairing or participating working groups on data sharing policies, repository guidance and handling specific subject-based data. This enhanced partnership highlights both organisations’ shared goal of supporting researchers to openly share data in order to improve discoverability, reproducibility and quality of research. Learn more.

New RDA Organisational Member – National Institute of Health

RDA is pleased to announce its newest organizational member, the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the nation’s medical research agency with a mission to make important discoveries that improve health and save lives. It is made up of 27 institutes and centers (ICs) and is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. To catalyze new capabilities in biomedical data science, NIH established the Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS) in 2018. The ODSS provides NIH-wide leadership and coordination to modernize the NIH data resource ecosystem, develop a diverse and talented data science workforce, and build strategic partnerships to develop and disseminate advanced technologies and methods.

NIH & RDA

As stated in its Strategic Plan for Data Science, NIH recognizes the importance of effective data management and sharing through adherence to the FAIR principles, community-based standards, best practices, and technology solutions. RDA's global and cross-disciplinary communities and social infrastructure promote practical advances in data and open science. The NIH and RDA partnership will develop, promote, and help adopt data-sharing frameworks and community principles (e.g., FAIR Principles), standards, and best practices. These activities benefit the final NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy, effective in 2023, and help NIH support a robust biomedical data ecosystem.

View all organizational members at RDA.

Become an RDA organizational member.

TAB Member Spotlight

In this issue of our newsletter, we are profiling the following members of RDA's Technical Advisory Board (TAB):

• Dimitris Koureas, Chief Information Officer at Naturalis Biodiversity Center and Executive Director of the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) European Research Infrastructure

• Devika Madalli, Indian Statistical Institute

New Survey: Implementation Stories Related to PID Graph Notebooks

FAIRsFAIR is interested to learn about implementation stories related to the PID Graph. In particular, we would like to follow up the use of Jupyter notebooks that have been developed in the FREYA project to query the DataCite GraphQL API.  Learn more.

EOSC Future Call for Evaluators

After its official kick-off last week, EOSC Future is going into high gear with the launch of a call for external evaluators. This call is seeking experts to evaluate a series of diverse grants to be awarded by the Research Data Alliance (RDA) over the course of the EOSC Future project. Though the call will remain open for submissions until June 2023, experts will be called on to evaluate grant applications as soon as October 2021. Learn more.

RDA 19th Plenary Meeting, Part of International Data Week, 20–23 June 2022, Seoul, South Korea

The founding organisations, the International Science Council’s Committee on Data (CODATA) and World Data System (WDS), the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and the local hosts announce that the main conference of International Data Week 2021 will be postponed to 20-23 June 2022. Associated events will take place from 18-26 June 2022. The conference will be a hybrid format with both in-person and virtual participation.

Call for Applications to Host International Data Week (IDW) 2025

Applications are now being accepted to host International Data Week 2025. IDW is a global and inclusive event organised by the Committee on Data (CODATA) and the World Data System (WDS) of the International Science Council (ISC), and the Research Data Alliance (RDA). It brings together data scientists, researchers, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and data stewards from disciplines across the globe to explore how best to exploit the data revolution to improve science and society through data-driven discovery and innovation. IDW combines the RDA Plenary Meeting, the bi-annual meeting of this international member organisation working to develop and support global infrastructure facilitating data sharing and reuse, and SciDataCon, the scientific conference addressing the frontiers of data in research organised by CODATA and WDS. To learn more about the application process and previous and upcoming International Data Week editions, visit https://rd-alliance.org/call-applications-host-international-data-week-idw-2025.

SAVE THE DATE: International Data Week 2023: A Festival of Data, 23–26 October 2023, Salzburg, Austria

The International Science Council’s Committee on Data (CODATA) and World Data System (WDS), and RDA have announced  International Data Week 2023: A Festival of Data, taking place on 23–26 October 2023 in Salzburg, Austria. Learn more.